


small restless gods

by element78



Series: small restless gods [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Hopeful Ending, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Feelings, Not Human, battle for the cowl era, becoming something Other, but not battle for the cowl compliant cause that shit wasn't cool, is it really major character death if he isn't actually dead just lost in the time stream, jason todd and his complicated relationship with bruce wayne, jaydick-flashfic: amnesty, not that they manage to work it out, supernatural themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:21:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21656680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/element78/pseuds/element78
Summary: Jason gets the phone call he never wanted to get and makes it home too late to stop something terrible from happening, and can only watch as Dick tries not to lose himself to the Bat.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Series: small restless gods [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1645024
Comments: 12
Kudos: 205
Collections: Jaydick Flash Fanwork Challenge





	small restless gods

**Author's Note:**

> Listen, I just wanted a fic where Dick's claim on humanity is getting a little questionable and Jason thinks it's kinda hot. This is not that fic, but it was rooted in that idea. There should be another amnesty fic coming down the pipeline soonish, less with the philosophical wankery and more with the porn.

He answered the phone because it was easier than trying to shut it off, because he had it routed through his comms link in his helmet and the bad guy du jour was pathetic enough to excuse the distraction, because it was Alfred’s number and Jason wasn’t about to ghost the one person who had never let him down in his life.

“Agent A,” he said in greeting. The alias served to both warn Alfred that he was at work, and soothe Jason’s own paranoid need to protect the older man, even if the drug dealer he’d been working on probably couldn’t hear anything over the sounds of his own pained whimpering.

“Jason,” Alfred said, a shocking breach of protocol, and then followed it up with- “you need to come home.”

Jason scoffed, annoyed and disbelieving, and didn’t try to disguise it. Even Alfred deserved to be snarled at, when he asked for _that_. “I’m busy.”

“Jason,” Alfred said again, and Jason heard it then, the shaking in his voice, the cracking dam of emotion. “Bruce is dead.”

And simple as that, with those three words, the world dropped away and left him freefalling.

* * *

He was in Gotham five days after Batman died.

It took three days to wrap up his current case, which he was too far into to abandon- his reluctantly talkative drug dealer led to a drug smuggler who used kids as mules and who was tight enough with the local police for Jason to excuse the bullet to his brain. He had been excessively violent, probably- he had been a zombie, a robot, a shadow. He had been locked into the present, terribly aware of everything, feeling every second carve itself onto his skin as it ticked by; he had been absent, shut down, unthinking and unfeeling. The only coherent thought in his head the entire time had been _what now_ , and by the time he was blowing past the Welcome to Gotham City sign on the road, he still hadn’t scraped together an answer.

He drove past the manor first, staying on the road instead of pulling off to open the gate. No news vans pulled off on the side of the road with cameramen standing ready in case of a glimpse of the family, no flowers or cards on the grass outside the gate. Most likely the world still thought Bruce Wayne alive and well, possibly fucked off to Bali or Majorca with a supermodel on each arm. Too many awkward questions if he died at the same time as Batman disappeared, too easy to find the connecting thread and unravel the rest of the family with a single tug.

Jason wondered which newly re-orphaned child had had to sigh and smile fondly and confirm that story for the cameras, _that’s just how Bruce is, we don’t worry about it, he always comes back_.

He swung around the property in a wide loop and came in from the side entrance, risking his motorcycle through the waterfall to access the vehicle entrance. He was authorized for entry, which both surprised him and didn’t- Alfred would have prepared for his arrival, but any sort of reception at the Cave felt wrong to him anymore. He was both stranger and son here.

“Alfred?” he called after he killed the engine and removed his helmet. It was darker than normal, only the auxiliary lights on, and empty in a creepy way. Like being in school after dark, when even the janitor has gone home, and halls that should echo with movement and life stand still. Even Jason’s voice fell flat and muted instead of ringing through the Cave like it should.

Still, there was a noise, movement, the soft susurrus of cloth on skin. Jason hung his helmet on the bike’s handlebar and took a moment for himself, just breathing, steeling himself. Then he lifted his head and strode into the Cave proper, heading up the stairs into the main area, turning back towards the medbay first-

Green light caught his eye and snapped his head around, his body pivoting to follow helplessly even as his lungs seized and his heart plummeted. The keypad on the door to the shrine shone green. Unlocked. Jason had told Alfred, had called him twice to make sure- lock it and don’t let them do anything stupid, he had said, and Alfred had promised wholeheartedly.

The door offered no resistance when he pressed the button to slide it open, and he smelled it- burnt flesh, incense. Blood black as ink in the candlelight. He slammed the heel of his hand against the button again and the door slid closed, but the copper-bright scent lingered in the air around him. He couldn’t breathe and his hands were shaking. Somehow, somehow- this was worse than Bruce dying.

He turned back to the medbay, already knowing what he would find.

* * *

It had taken him the better part of a day to reach the rendezvous point with the plane Alfred had sent, the result of his self-banishment to parts unknown. Distance from the family would help, he had thought, might even cool that simmering acid-green rage of his. All he had really accomplished was putting unnecessary hours of travel between himself and Gotham when the unthinkable had happened.

Dick looked up when Jason came into the room, his eyes catching the faint light and shining like a cat’s. Jason lingered in the doorway, one hand ready at the light switch.

“If I turn on the light and see you’ve got some new art, I am going to shoot you,” he said calmly. Dick made a humming noise, vague and unfocused.

“That’s fair,” he said, his voice soft and slow, his words thick with the mishmash circus accent he only used when he was drugged beyond rational thought or really wanted to piss Bruce off. “It’s your call, you’re the next up to bat.”

Jason flicked the switch in punishment for that line and Dick flinched at the light. He pulled his blanket up to his face, not covering himself but merely draping it over himself as a hood. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, but lifting his arm over his head caused the sleeve to ride down and show the bandages around his wrist. The beds of his nails were still stained red with his own blood.

“I told Alfred to lock that door and let no one in,” Jason said, past the peaks and valleys of anger and progressing now through a whole new plain of fury. It left him feeling strangely calm.

Dick gave him a heavy-lidded look, and said in the tone of voice that forced one to remember that he had been giving orders to Superman and Wonder Woman when he was still in shortpants, “I didn’t ask Alfred’s permission.”

“Where is it?” Jason asked, and- jesus, Dick was definitely on something potent, he hiked up his shirt and pulled down the waistband of his sweatpants without hesitation, searing the sharp arch of his iliac crest onto Jason’s memory forever as he revealed the swatch of bandages on his upper thigh.

“Bruce had it on his chest but he hated it there, he could never take his shirt off,” Dick said thoughtfully, brushing a fingertip over the bandages. Jason felt sick looking at it, felt sicker for how his eyes instead followed the vein leading like an arrow from Dick’s hip to groin. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists and waited it out- Jason’s lust was a familiar beast where Dick was concerned, one Jason was well-used to wrangling. He looked again when he had a leash on his libido, checked the skin color and the swelling. Dick had done a good job of not mutilating himself overly much, at least.

“You’re an idiot,” Jason said, and Dick hummed again, noncommittal. He looked absurd, blanket hood drooping over his face and pants halfway to his knees. Jason forced himself to ease back, to be patient. Lashing out at Dick in his current state would accomplish nothing. “Where is everyone? The replacement let you do this?”

Dick shrugged, upsetting the blanket and sliding it further down his face. “Alfred’s upstairs, he needed to sleep,” he said. “Tim isn’t here.”

“What does that mean, he isn’t here?” Jason demanded, but the blanket now lay across the bridge of Dick’s nose, hiding his eyes from view. He shifted back, settling into the pillows built up behind him, and Jason let him settle without arguing. He would come back later, when Dick was sober. Except first-

He waited, counted the exhales, until Dick had been still and breathing deeply with sleep for a hundred breaths. Then he reached out and carefully drew Dick’s pants back up into place. His hand was surprisingly steady for how badly it wanted to shake- anger, yes, and fear. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not to Dick.

“It was supposed to be me, birdbrain,” Jason said into the stillness between them, voice soft.

Then he moved away, flipped the lights back off and headed upstairs.

* * *

Alfred was most definitely not asleep, was instead drifting hollow-eyed like a ghost around the kitchen. He had baked Jason’s favorite, snickerdoodle cookies, still warm from the oven. Jason had not eaten in the three days since Alfred had called, and ate one cookie to make the old man feel better, and took some tea and sat with him at the kitchen table in silence save for the heavy ticking of the grandfather clock in the hallway.

“What happened?” he asked finally, quietly. He felt wrung-out and sore as though he had cried, had grieved, had screamed his loss out into the sky of the uncaring world. He had done none of those things, but the rawness around his eyes made him feel better nonetheless.

“With Master Bruce?” Alfred asked, and Jason shook his head.

“I got all the details,” he said. He had hacked Superman’s communicator, a job done suspiciously easily on his phone and McDonald’s wifi, and it had gone offline precisely one hour later. “I meant,” he said, and then jerked his chin to indicate the Cave.

“Ah,” Alfred said, and wrapped both hands around his mug of tea like he needed the warmth. “We all handled the situation poorly, I’m afraid. Things were said that cannot be unsaid, decisions were made that will be felt for years.”

“You let Dick-” Jason began, then drew one hand sharply across the other wrist. “And where’s Drake gone? Dick said he isn’t here.”

“I did not _let_ Richard do anything,” Alfred said icily. “You know full well that he will do what he thinks necessary, once he is set on a course.”

Jason flinched, properly rebuffed, and murmured an apology. He did know that. He knew that no one, from Bruce Wayne to Slade Wilson, could budge Dick off what he decided was the Right Thing To Do.

“Master Timothy is... following up on a lead,” Alfred finished once Jason was properly contrite. He paused a long moment mid-sentence, and Jason wondered fiercely- was it Jason who was not to be trusted with the truth, or all of them? Either way, it wasn’t right.

“Why isn’t he _here_?” he snarled. “Batman needs a Robin.” It was sing-song, rote. Batman needs a Robin.

“That,” Alfred said stiffly, “was one of the decisions Richard made, I believe, in haste and with little consideration for the consequences.”

“He fired Robin?” Jason barked an incredulous laugh. Of all of them, Dick should know how badly Batman needed a Robin- he had been the first one to give Bruce a reason to live, and had been his guiding light long after he graduated to the black and blue.

“He gave Robin to Master Damian,” Alfred said. “He views Master Timothy as his equal, not as his subordinate, and felt he deserved a role with greater autonomy than Robin. Unfortunately Master Timothy did not see it that way.”

Jason swallowed some lukewarm tea and thought about that one for a moment. He hadn’t had Robin taken from him, not like that- but Dick had, and it had destroyed his relationship with Bruce for _years_ , and now he’d turned around and done it to the replacement. You could practically hear the shattering sound as the replacement’s hero worship hit the ground and exploded.

And yet, there was something more pressing in what Alfred had just said.

“Who the fudge,” he asked, remembering to curb his words at the last moment for his audience, “is _Master Damian_?”

* * *

Master Damian was sitting with his new Batman when Jason made his way back downstairs after spending a few hours discussing the events of the last six months. He had missed a lot, it seemed, starting with the kid Talia had dropped off with Bruce only a few weeks after Jason had left Gotham. It was just another betrayal, another kick in the teeth- he had Bruce’s stubborn chin and deep eyes but it was Talia’s nose, high forehead, jawline. So this was what she had been keeping from him, the whole time Jason was with her and her League. An ace up her sleeve for the eventuality that Jason would fail.

The kid sprang to his feet, not noiseless but whip-crack fast and graceful, and placed himself between Jason and Dick when Jason came into the medbay. His eyes, darker even than Bruce’s ocean blue, narrowed in consideration.

“Todd,” he said, his voice polished and lightly British. No local accent for this boy, not when his mother and grandfather could afford the very best tutors. “The family disappointment.”

“Damian,” Dick said, but his tone was warning, not shredding. Alfred had mentioned, had stressed, that Damian was having a hard time fitting in and was lashing out, and Dick was trying his best to keep a level head and treat the kid with respect. Fortunately for him, Jason was not Dick, and could snap and snarl as much as he wanted.

“Beat it, squirt, the adults need to chat,” he ordered, sidestepping and gesturing towards the door. Baby Wayne’s face went red.

“ _You_ do not tell me what to do, street trash,” he snarled. Jason felt his own temper flare and sneered, dropping a hand to his thigh holster and watching Damian’s expression shift as he realized the threat and considered his plan.

Then Dick was there, hand dropping heavily onto Damian’s shoulder. He looked better, clear-eyed and properly awake, although he still swayed on his feet when Damian shrugged off the restraining hand. “Enough, both of you.”

“I am not leaving you alone with someone who has attempted to kill multiple members of this family!” Damian snapped. Then his expression went sly and he shot Jason a look. “Of course, he has failed every time, even against _Drake_ , so I suppose he can’t be too much of a threat.”

Jason went for the throat and referred to Talia in an extremely personal manner in Farsi, and Damian went for the throat with the knife he pulled out of his clothing somewhere. Jason had the time to brace himself and begin to reach to catch the brat-

Then there was something, some _one_ , between them, a hand on Jason’s chest that propelled him backwards, slamming his back into the wall. Damian was snatched up and dangled from a single hand like he weighed nothing- which, in fairness, Jason could do without enhanced strength, so that meant nothing. But he coughed with the impact and touched his hand to his chest and counted the number of steps he had been shoved.

Bruce had had a tight rein on it since long before Jason had come into his life. He’d never let his control slip, not even against killers who definitely deserved more of a beating than usual. The only people he had ever used his borrowed powers on were those who were themselves enhanced. That unchecked strength, from Dick Grayson of all people, was unsettling.

Dick seemed to realize it at the same moment, and set Damian down quickly. He pulled back until he wasn’t in arm’s reach of either of them.

“Damian, go see if Alfred needs help with dinner,” he ordered.

To his credit, Damian dug his heels and fought- Robin couldn’t be Robin if he was gonna be scared into unthinking obedience every time a little bit of the Bat creeped out. But the show of strength against Jason had soothed most of the kid’s concerns, and soon enough Damian was sent on his way. Jason waited until he was gone before he stepped away from the wall and looked Dick over. The idiot was holding himself carefully still in a way that screamed how badly he was repressing the shaking, his face gone pale with what could be either an emotional or physical response to his little slip.

If Jason made a big deal about it, Dick would wrap it up tight and push it down until it became too big to contain and he choked on it. And Jason- teeth gritted, breath snarling, fists clenched- Jason didn’t want that to happen.

It had been so easy when Bruce was alive. Jason had had purpose- because of Bruce, in spite of Bruce, in defiance and in defense of Bruce- as much as he had pretended otherwise, from the day they met Jason’s world had always revolved around Bruce _fucking_ Wayne. But Bruce was gone, and in his place was someone Jason had never truly wanted to hurt, and who stood before him now looking scared and overwhelmed and determined.

He could leave. He could walk out now. The situation was handled. There would be a Bat unleashed in Gotham again soon enough. Bruce wasn’t going to have a funeral for Jason to intentionally miss anytime soon. But-

He’d been too long thinking it over. Dick sighed and dragged a hand across his face and said quietly, a confession no one else would hear, “I don’t want it.”

“Then why.” It wasn’t a question.

“I found Tim and Damian fighting in the Cave.” Dick rolled his head back and shrugged his shoulders, not with meaning but like his back was hurting and he was trying to relieve the discomfort. “They’re always fighting, Damian tried to kill Tim the first week he was here. But this time they were fighting over that.” He tipped his head, indicating the shrine, and sat back down on the bed. The hand he put out to brace himself was shaking. 

“So you decided to jump on the grenade yourself,” Jason said. He was cold as ice and burning underneath. He wanted to rage, to tear something apart with teeth and knives, but there was no target for him to hurt. He wanted to grab Dick by the shoulders and shake him until he saw sense.

Dick shrugged again and looked at Jason with that infuriatingly opaque expression, the one that said Jason may as well be flayed open, body and mind, and pinned like a butterfly to a board, while Dick himself gave away nothing. “Couldn’t let the kids do anything stupid,” he said meaningfully.

From anyone else, it would mean exactly what the words implied- he was protecting Tim and Damian from themselves. But this was Dick Grayson, first and most successful student of Batman, and everything meant more than just words. Shit, _shit_ , Jason was a fucking moron for thinking that even a drugged-up Dick would sleep through someone touching him.

Jason didn’t want to get into it- not now, not ever- so he said, “You should have destroyed it instead.”

“Yeah, probably,” he agreed.

His head dipped down, shoulders up. His other hand was shaking now too and he was even paler than before. Jason folded his arms across his chest and asked, “Are you gonna ask for help or would you prefer to just pass out?”

“Will you? Help?” Dick lifted his head, tapetum lucidum catching the light and making his gaze glow like something unholy for a second. “If you’re here to mock me that’s fine, I just need to know if I can count on you.”

“What makes you think I’m not here to hurt you?” Jason asked. He could- Bat or not, Dick was no threat like this- and the question soothed the burn even as _will you help_ spread like brushfire through his mind.

“Probably shouldn’t’ve used them yet,” Dick said to himself, not even deigning to react to Jason’s question. “It’s all still settling in.”

So, no, he wasn’t going to ask for help. He was going to make Jason offer it. The urge to shake him was not exactly abating. “I’m getting Alfred.”

“Yeah, that’s probably good,” Dick said, then slowly collapsed onto his side, and the only reason he didn’t slide off the bed entirely was because Jason caught him first.

“Fuck,” Jason said to the unconscious man in his arms, to the room, to the situation in general, then pushed Dick back onto the bed and went to go get Alfred.

* * *

It took days for Dick to stabilize, to stop swinging between the extremes- one minute he was fine, the next he was collapsing from some sort of shock triggered by the tiniest accidental use of his new powers. It scared Damian, as much as he was determined not to show it. Hell, it scared Jason, loathe as he was to admit it. The only one who seemed certain of anything was Alfred, who after all had nursed Bruce through this years before.

The fifth day, Jason left at sunset, red helmet and most of his guns left behind- tonight was a night for breaking his fists on criminals’ faces, for hearing bone snap and smelling blood and feeling bruises rising hotly on his skin. Denied his true target, he took his rage out on those unlucky enough to catch his eye, to the point that a purse-snatcher’s victim felt moved to defend the thief from her savior.

He was sitting on a parapet, bloodied cigarette balanced precariously against a busted knuckle, when Batgirl descended onto the roof with a dramatic sweeping of her cape.

“Heard you were in a mood tonight,” she said, far too cheerful considering the circumstances. Jason glanced at her but said nothing, did nothing. He’d met her once or twice when he’d come back to Gotham the first time, but he knew very little about her- she had been Robin for a minute before Bruce fired her, she had died on Bruce’s watch. That was all he needed to know. She came over and perched on the ledge near him, some sense finally showing itself in her readiness for flight. Then she held out a greasy paper bag. “Churro?”

Jason considered the offering, then her. He stubbed the cigarette out against the roof and tossed it aside and picked a churro out of the bag. “That food truck that’s always parked on Emerson?”

“Yup,” Batgirl said, producing a small plastic cup filled with some sort of dipping sauce. She popped the lid off with a thumb and plucked it neatly from the air as it fell with the same hand, and shot Jason a triumphant grin. “They give a discount for bats in costume. Big bird introduced me.”

Ah. So these were manipulation churros. Jason grunted, then frowned, instantly annoyed with how much he sounded like Bruce.

Sure enough, Batgirl bit off the end of one churro, then glanced at Jason. “So how’s he doing? All Robin would tell me is that he did something really dangerous.”

“Really stupid,” Jason corrected. “He’s alive.”

She bit off the other end of the churro and held it up to her eye, squinting at the city through her fried dough tube. Then she dropped one end into the sauce- chocolate, from the smell of it. “It have something to do with that locked door that never opens?”

How much did she know? Bruce wouldn’t have told her based on just a few months’ working relationship. Hell, Bruce wouldn’t have told anyone if he could have gotten away with it, except Dick had heard something from one of the magic users he’d worked with as a Titan and had put the pieces together. Jason could still remember the night they’d returned from patrol to find Nightwing leaning against the shrine’s doorway, lock hacked and door open, more furious than Jason had seen from him before or since.

It had been the last time Jason saw Dick before Dick left for a mission in outer space and Jason left for Ethiopia.

“Something to do with that, yeah,” Jason said. “Little deal with the devil, fun shit like that.”

“Not literally,” Batgirl said, suddenly worried.

“Not quite,” Jason allowed. Beside him, Batgirl sighed in relief, then sucked on the end of the churro, slurping chocolate sauce up through it like a straw. Dick had probably introduced that to her too.

“So what’s he getting from this?” she asked when she was done violating the natural order of churros.

“Power, if it works,” Jason said bluntly. “Enhance strength and reflexis, night vision, healing. Nothing huge, but it makes it safer.” Batman was the safety net, the last resort, the first in and last out. He needed the boost the Bat could give him.

“If it works,” Batgirl echoed, tone and gaze sharp.

“He’s fine. He’s past the worst of it.” It wasn’t even a lie- the episodes were getting few and far between, Dick steadying on his feet as the Bat settled under his skin.

“Huh.” Batgirl sucked on the churro again, considering him with a long, measuring stare as she did. She wasn’t Batman-trained, not like the parade of Robins, but she was street-trained and in some ways that was far better. “So what’s got your tighty whities in a bunch? Pissed it wasn’t you?”

How to explain, to someone who hadn’t seen it, hadn’t watched Bruce live with it for years, the toll the Bat demanded? Red meat eaten bloody and almost raw, nights of restless sleeplessness, a yearning for violence always straining at the end of its leash? That his own life had not truly been _his_ anymore, the Bat in every shadow of his mind, every crevice of his soul, waiting to claim him as its own?

“It was supposed to,” he said, instead of getting angry, lashing out. He could tell her, here, this girl who understood how fallible Bruce had been. He would sooner cut out his own tongue than tell Dick, but he could tell her. “B meant for it to be me.”

“He told you that?” she demanded, sounding shocked, appalled. Ready to fight on his behalf, and it was a warming thought, even if Jason had no idea what he was supposed to do with that.

“He made it clear he didn’t want Nightwing going through that,” Jason began, flipping through the scattershot images of his Robin days. It was largely a blur, hard to pin down and isolate individual memories.

“No,” Batgirl said, stern and impatient. “Did he say that he wanted you to be fed to that thing?”

“No,” Jason snapped back. “I told him I would-”

And he stopped there, suddenly remembering. The morning after Nightwing had opened the shrine, Bruce hollow-eyed and buckled over like a man still reeling from a sucker punch, Jason stoic and determined not to disappoint him because that was all Nightwing did anymore- the horror on Bruce’s face, the plate of waffles Alfred had dropped-

“Awesome,” Batgirl said. “You’re a dumbass too. And here I was hoping you’d help N keep his shit together.”

Jason stood up, throwing his untouched churro as far as he could. “Great talk,” he said flatly.

“Yup,” Batgirl agreed. “Can you do me a favor and go home? I’ve gotten three calls about you, you’re scaring people. And not in the good way.”

Jason went, but only because his hands hurt too much to keep punching people, which really just served to prove her point. He took the long way back to the Manor, cutting off trucks and running red lights and courting all manner of stupid, avoidable death just to keep his mind busy.

Trying not to think about how ironic it was, that he implied Dick was a fool for senselessly jumping on a grenade that Jason himself had called dibs on years ago.

* * *

The worst part of life in the Manor was the mornings.

There were several bad parts about life in the Manor- Damian, Dick’s _condition_ , the ever-present cloud of devastated grief hanging over Dick and Alfred, the lack of the same grief in Damian and Jason as they awkwardly maneuvered around it- but the morning were the worst. Jason was an early riser no matter how late the night before was, earlier even than Alfred most mornings, and he ghosted around the too-big house with nothing to do but wait for something to happen. It always felt like he had forgotten to do something, like he should be out of that mausoleum of a house and doing something. He didn’t know why he was still there, and sitting at the kitchen table in the morning light, sipping tea and reading the news on his phone, was always his moments of weakest conviction. He had shit to do, and Dick didn’t need or deserve this sort of dedication. But then Alfred would come in and be surprised by Jason making tea for him and offer breakfast, and by the time Jason returned to the idea of leaving, Dick would be awake and there would be something that needed doing in the Cave.

A day after his talk with Batgirl, Jason came into the kitchen to find Dick sitting at the table, eyes narrowed and blinking against the sunlight. His breakfast was already served- eight strips of bacon that had been waved in the general direction of the oven before being plated.

He looked different in a way Jason couldn’t put his finger on. He looked like Bruce.

If Jason were as smart as he liked to think, he would turn around and walk out now. The Bat was settled, Dick had survived. Time for Jason to leave, past time. He should have been gone the first night.

“We’re moving into the city,” Dick said, even though he was facing away from the doorway and Jason had made no noise to alert him. He supposed he ought to get used to that.

“Gonna commute to the Cave?” Jason asked, walking past him to put the kettle on. No microwaving tea in this house, not without an hour-long lecture on acceptable methods for making tea.

“I was planning on taking it with us,” Dick said, and grinned when Jason glanced back at him. “Not the actual Cave, just the idea of it. Put it in the basement in the WE building, we live in the penthouse.”

“Good for you,” Jason said, turning back to the kettle even though it hardly needed his supervision.

A moment later Dick leaned back against the counter next to the stove. He was wearing a blanket draped over his shoulders and held closed over his chest by a hand fisted in the fabric, not a shirt, and his free hand picked at a loose thread for a moment before he caught himself and visibly forced himself to stop.

“I asked you the first night if you were here to help,” he said. “You never answered me.”

He was standing close, so close Jason could feel the unnatural warmth of him, and watching with that blue gaze that hadn’t needed supernatural help to be unnervingly intense. He had taken to standing close over the last week, and always getting closer, like he was testing boundaries. Seeing how close Jason would let him get.

Now was his chance. He could tell Dick to back off, and Dick would not blame him, would respect his wishes and stand aside as Jason left. Tell him now, and what relationship they had would remain intact, no harm no foul.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded. He could leave later.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Dick said, and grimaced. “Something’s different, is all, and I just-” he shrugged and looked away. He looked uncertain, scared.

Jason wanted to catch at the edge of the blanket and yank, to reveal what was hidden beneath it- because it was hiding something for sure, something Dick wanted to show to someone, and that someone would be Jason through sheer process of elimination- or possibly even because he wanted to show Jason, wanted him to be the one to know. He didn’t, though, let Dick tell him at his own pace, returned Dick’s respect of distance with his own.

He was rewarded a few moments later when Dick took a deep breath and stepped away from the counter and let the blanket drop. And there were lines on Dick’s chest, arching across his ribs onto his back, long sweeping straight lines and smooth curves and wicked points, black and blue like Nightwing.

Then they began to peel up with a sound like suction, the cracking of bone, noises of pain from Dick’s throat, and a moment later-

The kettle was whistling, so Jason moved it off the burner without even looking at it, singeing the pads of his fingers when he missed the handle and got too close to the base. Then he turned to properly face Dick- Dick and the massive bat wings sprouting from his back, spread across the kitchen, glowing mahogany brown and midnight blue in the sunlight. At night, he would be invisible against the sky.

“That’s new,” he said finally, because he needed to say something. He thought about reaching out to touch, but Dick folded the wings back, the points dragging on the tile floor.

“Bruce didn’t have wings.”

“‘Bruce wasn’t a flier,” Jason said instantly- he could see where this was going now, and he needed to head it off at the curve. Which meant swallowing his pride, and a great deal of misdirected anger, and prying some of the locks off his heart and allowing a little bit of emotional honesty to slip through. “You’re not becoming less human than him, Dick. You’re stronger than him and you’re stronger than that fucking Bat. You’re just an idiot who’s always secretly wanted wings, and the Bat gave them to you.”

Dick snorted, then looked at his wings again. “I’m not so sure about that,” he said quietly, and rubbed one hand on the back of his neck. “I can already feel it. It’s like someone watching me, waiting for me to slip up.”

Bruce had yielded to the Bat once or twice. Not during Jason’s tenure as Robin, but he’d heard the stories. He got control back eventually, but it was harder every time, and one day- one day, maybe-

“I asked if you were here to help but I didn’t actually,” Dick began. He looked up at Jason, all big earnest blue eyes. “If I lose control, if the Bat takes over, I need someone-"

"Shut up," Jason snapped. "You're not losing yourself to that thing and you know it."

"It can't be Damian. He wouldn't survive that, no matter what he thinks." Dick layered steel in his voice, shutting Jason's protest down. He was hard-wired to respond to and respect that tone of total authority. They all were. Then Dick's voice softened, going tired and worn and worried. "I don't want it to be you, either, but I can trust you to do what needs to be done, and know how to live with yourself afterwards. So, will you help me? Please?”

Jason squeezed his eyes shut. How easy it was to imagine Dick in his crosshairs- he had been there before, after all, and even Jason couldn't been sure that he hadn't really intended to kill Dick. He wanted to hate the bastard for asking, for knowing him for a killer and still thinking well of him. But, if Jason was in Gotham, he could- he could help.

Oh, he was a fool for thinking leaving was ever on the table. He should have left that first night. He should never have come back at all.

“I’m not moving into a penthouse,” he said, trying for fierce and untouchable, landing somewhere closer to desperate. Dick relaxed and even chanced a smile.

“I was actually hoping you’d take the Cave,” he said. “Live wherever you want, of course, but just keep the light on downstairs.”

A month ago, Jason would have been trusted with nuclear launch codes before he’d have been trusted with unsupervised access to the Batcave. The casual offer hooked into his gut and jerked his breath out and left him, winded and wounded, staring at this beautiful creature in awe.

Finally he said, “Put those away, Alfred’s coming in for breakfast soon,” and turned away.

There was movement, another skin-crawling slurping noise, then a presence at his back, a slow hand placed cautiously on his shoulder. “Thank you,” Dick said, painfully sincere, and it burned going down like the best whiskey and lingered long after he left to go put on a shirt.

Jason leaned against the stove and closed his eyes and didn’t think at all about blue-black wings in the night.

* * *

The new Batmobile was going to fly, because the new Batman was a nerd and thought it sounded cool. Unfortunately, there wasn’t room to build it in the basement, so Dick and Damian decamped to the Cave during construction. Jason found them there one night when he came back from patrol, nerding out over some part of the Batmobile’s design. Robin Jason would have cut off the limb of dealer’s choice for the opportunity to help build and cruise around in it, but Red Hood Jason played it cool and ignored them. At least Damian was too caught up to posture and snarl at Jason like a junkyard dog at the end of its chain.

He was heading towards the showers and smirking at the voices coming from the computer area when a green glow caught his eye- the keypad on the shrine, door still unlocked. Jason hadn’t gone near it since he first got here after Bruce’s death. He couldn’t imagine anyone else had either. Still- he looked over his shoulder, checking on the others, and veered off.

The smell hit him again when he opened the door- burnt flesh from the brand, metal tang from the blood-drawn words of power on the floor, incense to carry the drug that left the summoner open and vulnerable to the Bat’s intrusion. He came inside this time, three steps into the room and three steps farther than he had ever come before, and let the door slide shut behind him.

The Bat hung on the wall, leathery wings spread wide, dried skin stretched grotesquely over its bones. He didn’t have the gift that would let him see the bindings on it, the summoning ritual carved into its very essence, but he could see dark smudges where Bruce, and then Dick, had broken the seals with their own blood. Submitting. Volunteering.

The door slid open, then shut once more, then Dick was standing beside him. He barely limped anymore from the burn on his thigh, the Bat’s sigil stamped into his flesh to seal its essence in. He simmered with leashed power, eyes glittering in the dark, shoulders rolling as though to rearrange wings.

“I wouldn’t have let it be you,” he said. “Whatever you think Bruce wanted, it didn’t matter. He wasn’t here, I was. And I wouldn’t have let it be you.”

Jason didn’t know what to say to that, how to feel about that. He looked away from Dick, back to the Bat.

“Someday I’m going to burn that fucking thing,” he said calmly.

Dick came over and touched his elbow, turning him away from the Bat. He considered Jason with his eerie glowing eyes for a long moment, and Jason thought- wildly, and wanted, so desperately wanted- that Dick was going to lean up and kiss him. It seemed inevitable, Dick’s gaze flicking down to his lips, something dark and heavy in his eyes- but he only smiled, sad and patient.

There was still a hand on Jason’s arm, holding him close, squeezing uncomfortably tight with inhuman strength. Clinging, and not letting go.

“Someday,” Dick agreed, although he didn’t seem to be talking about the Bat anymore.

They left the shrine together, and Dick locked the door behind them.


End file.
